NASA Worldview “true-color” image of the Lena Delta on June 10th 2012, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite

[Edit – June 11th]

DMI’s daily mean temperature for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel has reached zero degrees Celsius almost exactly on the climatological schedule:

We calculate our freezing degree days on the basis of the freezing point of Arctic sea water at -1.8 degrees Celsius. On that basis this winter’s grand total of 3740 was reached on June 1st:

Despite the “coolish” recent weather total FDDs are way below the climatology and other recent years. Consequently there’s a lot less sea ice in the Arctic left to melt at the start of this Central Arctic melting season than in any previous year in the satellite record. However whilst there are some melt ponds visible in the Arctic Basin on MODIS, in that respect 2017 is lagging behind both last year and 2012.

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29 thoughts on “Facts About the Arctic in June 2017”

Well 2016 was certainly a big departure from previous years;
The trend overal each year is in one direction …
Even if 2017 does not turn out as bad as 2016 the trend of less ice would still be in place overal

Great information!
The ‘ice-extent’ graph always seems deceptive as it includes the Greenland Sea, the Nares, CAA, and even Hudson Bay? Those are all irrelevant, and toast. What counts is the Arctic Ocean only in terms of measuring its stability to previous years. Do you have the chart for the main ocean only (includes all the peripheral oceans in the Arctic Basin, but not the N. Atlantic export and Ontario coast !) ?
Thanks !

Sorry, I may not have the right terms.
When you say ‘Central’ in the graph, that is different than ‘Basin’, that makes sense. I have been calling it Arctic Ocean to try to exclude Greenland Sea, Baffin, Hudson, etc.
So in the graph you just posted is what I was looking for. Thanks!

It will take me a while to figure out how to have a year to year volume comparison for just the ocean ( CAB plus Beaufort, Chukchi, East Siberian and Laptev Seas, as you said), or maybe you posted that and I missed it? (Barents included or not, won’t make much difference, as it is near empty most years now)

And as you said: “By that definition 2017 “Basin volume” is still significantly below 2012.”
And that to me is the most important information out there right now.

If I were to look at the above resource in your Arctic Sea Ice Graphs page would I be able to say that the ‘Wrangel Arm’ feature often mentioned in previous years as of some importance seems to be weakened and therefore the strength of the Arctic ice looks quite divided?

Also, this graph from NSIDC showing the ‘Cumulative temperature departure from average (for) Barros, Alaska’ seems too strange to ignore.

I know people keep mentioning Barrow over and over for some strange reason but now I know why…. that does not look like sinusoidal behaviour!!!

How relevant to the subject of Arctic sea ice decline is this exact graph?

The rate-of-change is of course what fascinates but knowing that exponential growth can never occur shouldn’t we perhaps be expecting this Barrow graphs behaviour to show up elsewhere so as to spread the load so to speak? (It’s like a Sherlock Holmes mystery ….!)

[Roughly guessing of course the slowdown seems to be because of ‘the excesses of the 80s’ and the near exponential rise due to ‘the rising dragon called China’ let alone India.]

For the Barrow graph, if you turn the graph 45 degrees anticlockwise, it then shows no temperature anomaly until about 1980 and then it shows a hockey stick positive temperature anomaly. Given the length of time it shows the value going down (i.e. negative anomaly accumulating) 1921-1980 it’s hard for me to believe that the axes are correct.

According to the study, permafrost appears to be more susceptible to global warming than previously thought, as stabilising the climate at 2ºC above pre-industrial levels would lead to the thawing of more than 40% of today’s permafrost areas.

If the above were anywhere near correct, and we are already close to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels already, shouldn’t we be looking at numbers and time-series plots on the subject of ‘Permafrost’ in a very very serious sense about now?

(To compare and contrast such things with sea ice levels would in my mind be of the utmost importance…)

Wouldn’t say tipping point yet. Cumulative numbers affected by big early high (for winter) temps. Temps for last 60 days at least have been at or below normal, longest streak of that for a while. Look at recent slope of cumulative curve to see what I mean. Unusual positive temps in winter allows heat to drain from planet- not necessarily evidence of ‘tipping’.